I was able to interview Jake McKee, the Community Guy, in Austin Texas. He shares some key strategies on building a community program, finding consultants, and the do’s and do nots. Jake’s background?

“Jake McKee is an evangelist for online and offline community building, social media, and customer-company interaction. He has been working with online communities, fan groups, and consumer groups since the early days of the Internet, and has a rich background in Web development, community management, business strategy, and product development.”

Although I turn my phone off, and ask others to as well, I apologize for the cell phone interference noises, I suspect that was from others around us.

That was a quality interview. I’ve been reading your blog for a couple months now. Thanks for the good content! Looking forward to exploring Jake’s blog. Jake made an interesting comment about choosing Consultants: something to the effect that it is a bad sign if the vendor is offering to manage the community or the blog.

Quite often the client does not have the resources to manage conversations across different communities. Especially if we are talking about very active communities (i.e. moms, gay/lesbian, pet owners, etc). The reason many companies seek Consultants is to execute on the strategies for which they have very little resources. And I think I may understand Jake’s concern when I say I know that the conversation should be between the company and the customer. However, if the company and the consultant spend the time to establish a “point of view” before executing this should not create problems. Or am I still missing the point? Is the lack of resources an excuse for the client not to engage community itself?

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/ jeremiah_owyang

Nick, great

Glad you liked it. The show is a “video white paper” I simply get the best folks in the industry to give *practical* advice. Not sage on stage!